Fond Memories: Phantasy Star

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Remembering the greatest RPG of the 8-bit era.

By Travis Fahs

As advanced and beautiful as games may be these days, it's good to know your history. With over three decades of videogame releases, there are hundreds of titles from yesteryear that still hold a special place in our hearts. Games may be getting longer, prettier, and more complex, but that doesn't take anything away from games we played back in the day, and that's where our Fond Memories come in...

You never forget your first RPG. While the shooters, platformers, and adventures crack and fade, there's an odd sentimental attachment to that first epic step into the world of role-playing. Whether it was Phantasy Star, Dragon Warrior, or Final Fantasy VII, we cling to these memories long after discovering games with better gameplay and better stories.

I can't say with objective honesty that Phantasy Star remains to this day one of the best RPGs of all time, and it took me many years to come to terms with that reality. But given its due context, it remains an earth-shattering title, among the finest of the 8-bit generation, and the high-water mark for the genre for years to come.

Gameplay

It's hard to look back on the mechanics of Phantasy Star and find anything special. The fact is it really did nothing entirely new. Context is everything, though, and Phantasy Star hit the US shores before Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. Alongside Miracle Warriors, it introduced a generation of console players to a completely new kind of game. If you weren't playing computer games and you didn't live in Japan, this was going to turn your world completely upside down.

Phantasy Star was fairly cinematic for an 8-bit title.

The genre staples we now know so well were all there. You assembled a party of four, each with their own unique equipment and abilities and dragged them across continents and planets as you increased in power and pressed ever closer to your goal. But back in a time when the vast majority of games lacked even a proper save feature, the idea of such a massive quest spanning entire worlds full of people seemed like something very special indeed.

Why I Love the Game

It's tough to pinpoint exactly what drew me to a game so alien to the console action titles I thrived on. At $70, the cartridge was firmly out of reach of the average kid's meager allowance. Luckily, I bought everything used at flea markets, where games for the unpopular Sega console rarely topped $5. Even still when I saw that used Phantasy Star box with the curiously high price tag of $15, I knew somehow that it would be worth the extra sacrifice. I had to borrow a few dollars to get it, but I knew I had to have it. I don't know how; maybe it was just fate.

It was something immediately different. The mix of swords, sorcery, and sci-fi might seem old hat now, but such an inter-mingling of the nerd-fiction archetypes was a lot less common back then. The story immediately sucked me in. With an impressive cut-scene to kick the game off, the quest seemed truly epic. I set out to explore the town.

In the northeast of the first town there was an unassuming cave. Upon entering, the game switched to a first person view of the dungeon. Not only that, but it was full-screen and actually moved and animated fluidly! These first-person dungeons were one of the most impressive parts of the game. Sure, they ultimately meant you'd need to keep some graph paper handy if you wanted to get out alive, but the uncertainty added a suspense to exploring that the later games in the series (with their third person dungeons) could never match.

THe three planets of Phantasy Star offer sprawling real estate.

Then I ventured outside. Boy, was that a hard lesson. A few steps into the great wilderness and I was stuck down by a couple lousy flies. Phantasy Star was brutally tough to get started, earning it a somewhat unfair reputation as a level grinder. At the start of the game, heroine Alis is helpless. With a little patience, though, things become a lot easier. There are really only a few points in the game where you have to aggressively level you character, but the beginning is certainly one of them.

Mostly it was the sense of wonder and exploration that I remember most. By standards of the day, this game was huge, and you never knew what was coming. Setting foot on a Motavia, and discovering a whole new planet with different architecture, fauna, and totally different climate; meeting the Dezorans on their icy home world; plumbing the depths of some massive dungeons... These are the moments that defined Phantasy Star for me.

It took weeks to reach the end. Much of Phantasy Star -- particularly the later part of the game -- was very open-ended, and you could spend weeks wandering its maps to find everything. I recently replayed the game in only four days. It was a lot like revisiting your childhood home and realizing that tree fort wasn't as high up as you remember. Now I know where to go and what to expect, and the mystery of exploration is gone.

Phantasy Star's turn-based battle were mysterious to 8-bit gamers.

There was a sense of humor to the quest; it kept you guessing right up until the end. You always felt like you were on the last leg of you journey, that everything you were doing was important, only to have your hopes dashed as the camera pulls back to reveal the true scope of your quest. But when you finally got there, it was epic.

I'll never forget that final fight with Dark Falz. It was the only battle where the enemy's HP wasn't visible. I watched as Noah fell, then Myau, then Odin. Sure the battle was turn-based, but my hands were shaking all the same. I could barely hold the controller. I fought until I had exhausted every last healing item in my inventory. I wore my MP down to zero. All I could do was hack away. The boss attacked again, and I was down to 1 HP. My heart sank, as pressed the attack button, expecting that bastard to take initiative, like he always does. And then… I won. It was such a perfect moment, I thought that the battle must have been scripted to happen that way. It was the perfect ending to the greatest game I had ever played. I hastily wrote down the ending, Engrish grammar and all, so I could look back at it whenever I wanted.

No game before or since has had quite the impact on me that Phantasy Star did. It's not so much that there haven't been better games. But I'll never be eight years old again and playing an RPG for the first time. I'm older, wiser, and I've grown into a professional know-it-all who earns his keep by picking games apart. In a way, for the rest of my gaming career, I'll always be chasing that [Casba] Dragon, trying to get that feeling back but knowing I never will.